Linguistic Society of America

Men's and Women's Speech in Koasati Author(s): Mary R. Haas Reviewed work(s): Source: Language, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1944), pp. 142-149 Published by: Linguistic Society of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/410153 . Accessed: 24/01/2013 15:08
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MEN'S AND WOMEN'S SPEECH IN KOASATI

MARY R. HAAS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

[Koasati has certain well-defined differences between the speech of men and of women. Other Muskogean languages, such as Muskogee and Hitchiti, also had such differences formerly, and here and there throughout the world one meets with similar instances. Sometimes the differences affect vocabulary items, sometimes the pronunciation of particular words.]

I Koasati is a Muskogean language now spoken in southwestern Louisiana.1 One of the most interesting features of the language is the fact that the speech of women differs in certain well-defined respects from that of men. The differences may be described by means of a fairly simple set of rules, and the most concise way to formulate them is to set up the forms used by women as basic and to derive the forms used by men from these. While this procedure is preferred because of the greater expediency it offers in the formulation of the rules, it is in most instances arbitrary. In a few instances, however, the speech of women is seen to be somewhat more archaic than that of men and to this extent it is possible to justify the procedure on historical grounds. The differences between the two types of speech are confined to certain indicative and imperative forms of verbal paradigms. In order to simplify the statement of the rules governing the forms which differ in these paradigms, the rules governing the identical forms are presented first. These are as follows: (1) If the women's form ends in a vowel, the men's form is the same. Examples: W or M 'I lifted it'2 lakawwilt 'you stirred it' oktawhiskd 'he drank' isk6

1The collection of materials on the Koasati language comprised a part of the work done on the history of the towns of the Creek Confederacy under a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society in 1938-39. Other languages mentioned in this paper for which the materials quoted are taken from my own notes are Muskogee (Creek), Tunica, and Thai. Linguistic materials on Muskogee were collected during field work among the Creek Indians (in Oklahoma) in 1936 and 1937through two grants made by the Department of Anthropology, Yale University. Linguistic materials on Tunica (in Louisiana) were obtained principally in 1933 under the auspices of the Committee on Research in American Native Languages of the American Council of Learned Societies. My work on Thai was done for the Committee of the National School of Modern Oriental Languages and Civilizations of the American Council of Learned Societies. 2 Briefly described, the sounds of the Koasati language are as follows: The vowels are i, a, and o; they may occur either with or without the length phoneme. Short i = [I] (but
o" ized. Consonants are as follows:i" voicelessa" stops p, t, k; voiceless affricate 6; voiced stop b; voiceless spirants f, 1, h; semivowels y, w; lateral 1; nasals m, n. There are two pitchstresses in Koasati, the high (') and the falling ('). All syllables preceding the stressed syllables are high in pitch, except that an open syllable containing a short vowel is low. 142 [e] finally), a = [A], o
=

[u]; long

= [e-],

= [a-],

= [o'].

All vowels occur also nasal-

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(2) If the women's form ends in 6, the men's form is the same. Examples: W or M lakdw6 'you are lifting it' 'he is looking at it' hi-' 6a-khda 'you (pl.) are chopping it' The remaining rules take care of the instances in which the forms used by men differ from those used by women. The first three of these provide for the cases in which the men's forms substitute an s for the nasalization of a final vowel or for certain final consonants of the women's forms. (3) If the women's form ends in a nasalized vowel, the men's form substitutes an s for the nasalization. Examples: W lakawtakk M lakawakk6s lakawwd's kd's 'I am not lifting it' 'he will lift it' 'he is saying'

lakaww4" kq" (4) If the women's form has the falling pitch-stress on its final syllable and ends in a short vowel followed by 1, the men's form substitutes the high pitch stress for the falling pitch-stress and an s for the 1. Examples: W lakawwil molhil lakawh6l M lakawwis molhis lakawhds 'I am lifting it' 'we are peeling it' 'lift it!' (addressed to second person plural)

(5) If the women's form has the falling pitch-stress on its final syllable and ends in a short vowel followed by n, the men's form retains the falling pitchstress but substitutes an s for the n and lengthens the preceding vowel. Examples: W lakaw6in taWilwdn iltoihnn M lakaw&'s ta'ilwd's 'don't lift it!' 'don't sing!' 'don't work!'

iltodihn6"s The last rule takes care of the instances in which the men's forms differ from the women's by the simple addition of an s. (6) If the women's form ends in a short or long vowel plus one or two consonants, the men's form adds an s except under the following circumstances: when the women's form ends in t, rule 2; when the women's form has the falling pitch-stress on its final syllable and ends in a short vowel followed by 1, rule 4; when the women's form has the falling pitch-stress on its final syllable and ends in a short vowel followed by n, rule 5. (It should also be noted that t + s regularly contracts to c.) Examples:

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144 W lakdw lakdwwitak ml1 lakdwwilit i'p ta't ta~ilw iltoli'hn mi's1

MARY R. HAAS M lakdws lakdwwitaks mdls lakdwwili6 i'ps ta'ts tatlws iltoli'hns mi-sls

'he is lifting it' 'let me lift it' 'he is peeling it'3 'I lifted it' 'he is eating it' 'he is weaving it' 'you are singing' 'we are working' 'he is blinking'

This completes the rules governing the differences between the speech of men and of women. The table below summarizes these rules by showing in condensed form the final part of the word. Note that a stands for any vowel, k for any consonant, while other letters and diacritics have their proper phonetic value. W a q q" M a 5 as a's ds W dn ak a'k akk M d's aks a'ks akks

a'kk a'kks It sometimes happens that several of these rules operate within the same paradigm and in such a case the differences between the speech of the two sexes is particularly striking. This is illustrated in the three singular paradigms given below: W o'ttl 6dst 6dt lakawwil lakdwd lakdw ka'hdl iskl M o'tis d6sJ 6 lakawwuis lakdwj lakdws ka'hds i-sks kd's 'I am building a fire' 'you are building a fire' 'he is building a fire' 'I am lifting it' 'you are lifting it' 'he is lifting it' 'I am saying' 'you are saying' 'he is saying'

dt

ka" As has been mentioned, in some instances the speech of women appears to be more archaic than that of men. In rule 4 it is pointed out that when the women's form has a falling pitch-stress on the final syllable and ends in a short vowel followed by 1, the men's form substitutes a high pitch-stress for the falling pitcha The I is not lost here because the word does not have the falling pitch-stress; contrast with rule 4.

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stress and an s for the 1. In the cases that fall under this rule the women's forms are more archaic than those of men. In a first person singular present progressive form like lakawwil (w. sp.) the -1 is the first person singular sign and is related to the suffix -li which is used in the aorist and certain other paradigms; compare lakawwil (w. sp.) 'I am lifting it' with lakawwilt (w. or m. sp.) 'I lifted it'. The men's form corresponding to lakawwul, however, is lakawwis and in it the personal sign is missing. The archaism of women's speech is further illustrated in a first person plural present progressive form like lakawhil (w. sp.). Here the personal sign is -hil, related to the first person plural sign -hili which is used in the aorist and certain other paradigms; compare lakawhil (w. sp.) 'we are lifting it' with lakawhili (w. or m. sp.) 'we lifted it'. The men's form correspondingto lakawhil is lakawhis;the 1of the ending -hil has been lost. This concludes the technical discussion of the differences between men's and women's speech in Koasati. It is of interest to note that at the present time only middle-aged and elderly women use the women's forms, while younger women are now using the forms characteristic of men's speech. The attitude of older Indians toward the two forms of speech is also interesting. One of my men informants thinks that the speech of women is better than that of men. He said that women talk 'easy, slow, and soft. It sounds pretty. Men's speech has too much ssss.' Members of each sex are quite familiar with both types of speech and can use either as occasion demands. Thus if a man is telling a tale he will use women's forms when quoting a female character; similarly, if a woman is telling a tale she will use men's forms when quoting a male character. Moreover, parents were formerly accustomed to correct the speech of children of either sex, since each child was trained to use the forms appropriate to his or her sex. II Other Muskogean languages appear to have had at one time differences between the speech of men and of women similar to those preserved in Koasati down to the present day. Creek men and women of the present day speak in exactly the same way, both using the forms which were once used only by men. But occasionally the archaic women's forms are preserved in tales where a female character is talking. At first these strange forms were puzzling to me--they were like nothing in ordinary speech; but after I discovered the phenomenon of sex differences in speech in the related Koasati language and learned the nature of these differences, it became clear that these puzzling forms were those formerly used by women. The matter was then carefully checked with some of the older people and these were also able to identify the forms as archaic women's speech. The examples that I found in Muskogee in this way are not very numerous, but here again the women's forms appear to be basic. The only rule discovered is as follows: Women's forms end in a long vowel with a falling pitch-stress while the corresponding men's forms shift the stress to the penultimate syllable, alter-

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146

MARY R. HAAS

ing it to a high pitch-stress, and in addition shorten the long vowel and add s. If the shortened vowel is i it is often dropped altogether. Examples: W M 'he was'4 okikas okikd" 6-kicki'you are' d6kickis 'I meant' (short i dropped) o'kakaykV" o'kakdyks 'let him stay' apo'kiph6ykas apo-kiphoykd, These few examples are practically all that have been discovered; but when coupled with the evidence from the Koasati, the evidence here seems conclusive for the postulation of a former special women's speech among the Creeks. Gatschet' tells us that Hitchiti also once had special forms of speech used by women and he gives brief but convincing proof of this fact when he speaks of 'the ending -i of the verbs, standing instead of the -is of the male dialect.' Gatschet also thinks that the forms used by women were merely more archaic and that long ago men used these forms also; but he offers no proof for this assumption and I think it is more reasonable to assume that the so-called 'ancient' language was actually used only by women. That it was considered 'ancient' by the Hitchiti themselves probably means no more than that women no longer regularly used these forms in ordinary conversation. Evidence for the presence of a difference between the speech of men and of women has been brought forth for three of the Muskogean languages. In a paper on The Classification of the Muskogean Languages,' I presented the evidence for classifying these languages into two primary divisions, the Western and the Eastern. The Western division consists only of Choctaw and Chickasaw, but the Eastern division may be divided into three subdivisions, namely Alabama plus Koasati, Hitchiti plus Mikasuki, and Muskogee (Creek) plus Seminole. It is thus seen that the evidence for sex differences in speech comes entirely from the Eastern division and that each of the main subdivisions is known to have possessed the trait. Whether or not it was at one time present in the languages of the Western division also is not now known. III Languages which contain major or minor differences between the speech of men and of women are not so rare as might be supposed. From the evidence that has been given in the two preceding sections it appears that most of the Muskogean languages, originally spoken throughout a large part of the south4 The sounds of the Muskogee language are similar to those of Koasati (footnote 2) except that the Muskogee stops are voiceless lenes and there is an additional nasal 0. A fuller description is given in my article Ablaut and its Function in Muskogee, LANG. 16.149-50. The rules for the pitch-stresses are also similar to those of Koasati; but in Muskogee, when two high pitch-stresses occur in the same word, the level of the second is lower than that of the first. Unstressed final syllables are very low in pitch. 6 Albert S. Gatschet, A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, 1.79 (Philadelphia, 1884). 6 In Language, Culture, and Personality 41-56, ed. by Spier, Hallowell, and Newman.

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eastern United States, may have had such differences. Sapir7 has published evidence that such differences existed in Yana, an Indian language of California, while Jenness8 speaks of their occurrence among the aboriginal languages of Canada, saying: 'More strange to Europeans were the slight differences in speech between men and women that appeared in a few languages. There were sometimes mere differences in vocabulary, certain words being used by women only; but in Siouan and in the Eskimo dialect of Baffin Island there were also slight differences in grammatical form.' That this phenomenon occurred also in South America is evidenced by the fact that Carib has become almost the classical example of sex differences in speech. The phenomenon occurs also in Asia. Borgoras9has demonstrated its existence in Chukchee, spoken far to the north in eastern Siberia, and it is also found in less extensive form in Thai, spoken far to the south in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. An interesting trait apparently related to this is that in which the sex of the hearer is of grammatical importance. Taking both traits together we find that there are three main types in which the sex of speaker and/or hearer is grammatically relevant. These three types are shown in the following table.
SPEAKER HEARER

Type I Type II Type III

M W M or W M orW M M W

M or W M or W M W M W M

The ways in which these types of differences may be actualized are varied, but most of them fall into one or the other of the two following categories: (1) differences in vocabulary, possible in all three types shown in the diagram; and (2) differences in the pronunciation of many or most words, common in Type I. A few examples of these three types of differences and the ways in which they are actualized may be presented here. In Thai there are two important differences which fall into Type I and which are actualized by a difference in vocabulary items. The first of these differences is seen in the use of the pronoun phom 'I'lo by men and the use of the pro7 Edward Sapir, Male and Female Forms of Speech in Yana, Donum Natalicium Schrijnen 79-85. 8 Diamond Jenness, The Indians of Canada, Bull. 65, National Museum of Canada (Ontario, 1932). I am indebted to Dr. Erminie W. Voegelin for this reference. I Waldemar Borgoras, Chukchee, in Handbook of American Indian Languages 2.631903. 10 The phonetic symbols used in the Thai examples quoted here have their usual values except that ph stands for [p'], ch for [6'], and kh for [k']. There are five tones, the even or

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MARY R. HAAS

noun dichdn 'I' by women. There are many other pronouns that can be used, depending on the relative rank of speaker and hearer, the degree of intimacy between speaker and hearer, or the kinship between speaker and hearer. The pronouns ph6m and d~ichdn are used in ordinary polite conversation (not intimate) when speaker and hearer are of equal rank. The second difference in the speech of men and of women in Thai is in the use of certain polite particles. These are placed at the end of the sentence, particularly in questions and answers and in certain formulaic expressions such as those meaning 'Thank you', 'Excuse me', and the like. The polite particle used by men is khrdb;those used by women are khd? (in questions) and khd?; (in answers or statements). Although Type I differences are shown by only four vocabulary items (two for men and two for women), the polite particles are used frequently and, because of this frequency, an ordinary conversation is characterized by considerable difference in men's and women's speech. In Yanan the forms used by women are shortened and altered at the end so that in this case (in contrast to Koasati) the men's forms appear to be basic. Thus where a man says ?auna a woman says ?auh 'fire'. In Chukchee12 also sex differences in speech are indicated by altering the words; two varieties of this, presumably occurring in different mentions Borgoras dialects. In the first variety the men's form appears to be basic and the rule for determining the women's form, according to Borgoras, is as follows: 'Women generally substitute 9 for 5 and r, particularly after weak vowels. They also substitute 99 for rk and 6h.'" Therefore where a man says rdmki6hin 'people', a woman says gdmkIfln. And, quoting Borgoras again, 'The sounds 6 and r are quite frequent; so that the speech of women, with its ever-recurring9, sounds quite peculiar, and is not easily understood by an inexperienced ear.' In the second variety of differences in Chukchee the women's forms appear to be basic. According to Borgoras, 'The men, particularly in the Kolyma district, drop intervocalic consonants, principally n and t. In this case the two adjoining vowels are assimilated.' Example: nitvdq&nat (w. sp.) vs. nitvdqaat (m. sp.) Instances of Type II, where the sex of the hearer is of importance, are not so common as instances of Type I. One interesting instance, though, is found in the Tunica'4 language of Louisiana. Here the differences are found only in the pronominal system, and consist in the use of different words, prefixes, or suffixes. Moreover, the differences are maintained in three numbers, singular, dual, and plural, though in certain paradigms the dual and plural forms have fallen tomiddle (unmarked), the low ('), the falling (4), the high ('), and the rising ('). A fuller description of Thai sounds is found in my article The Use of Numeral Classifiers in Thai, LANG.18.201-2, footnote 2. phonetic symbols used by Borgoras in the examples quoted have their usual values except that 6 is [c] (or, as he says 'like z in German Zeit') and that Ais [E]. Borgoras also indicated that the consonant 9 [c] is used only by women, op.cit. 645. 1 Mary R. Haas, Tunica, in Handbook of American Indian Languages 4.1-143.
12 Borgoras, 13 The
11

Sapir, op.cit. op.cit.

665-6.

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gether. Altogether these differences occur in eight different paradigms. Examples:

HEARER SINGULAR DUAL PLURAL

Semelfactive Suffixes Independent Pronouns

-?a

-wi'na

-wi'ti

W
M

-?i
md

-hi'na

-hi'ti

wi'nima

he'ma

hi'nima

Instances where Type II is combined with Type I to produce Type III are found in some of the Siouan languages, such as the now extinct Biloxi. Here there was an elaborate system of Type III forms in use-for example in the imperative of verbs. The following sample set, worked out by Dorsey,1"means 'Carry it'!
SINGULAR PLURAL

M to M M or W to W W to M

ki-kayko' ki-tki' ki-tate'

ki'-takayko' ki'-tatki' ki'-tatute'

The Biloxi picture is complicated not only by a full set of Type III forms in both singular and plural but by an additional set of singular and plural forms which are used by both sexes when speaking to children, thus: ki 'carry it!' (sing.) and kitu' 'carry it!' (pl.)
15 James O. Dorsey and John R. Swanton, A Dictionary of the Biloxi and Ofo Languages, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bull. 47 (Washington, 1912); see p. 3. I have made a few changes in the spelling used by Dorsey and Swanton so that the phonetic symbols used would correspond to those in common use today. I have also put the M-to-W and the Wto-W forms together, since they are identical, though Dorsey listed them separately.

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